Daily Archives: April 15, 2008

Thought for the day.

Reading Zoso’s post from yesterday – about Age of Conan’s use of captchas for access to their forum search – made me wonder what sort of clue this might give us as to how their game will operate:

To prevent bots in our game, Age of Conan is pleased to announce a revolutionary new anti-bot technology for our combat system: The Combat Captcha.

For example: you press 1 to activate your Skullsplitter with a Side Order of Extra Gore ability, and a captcha pops up:

It looks like you are trying to crush the cranium of this Cimmerian. To prove that you are a genuine player, please type the word displayed below in order to complete your manoeuvre.

cROm sEz DiE

The letters are formed from the entrails of your previous opponents and framed on a background that looks like the crime scene from a slasher film; if you can identify the word and type it in time, you get to execute the ability, and probably your opponent. Genius!

I think it could work. Gone are the days of mindless key mashing in order to participate in combat, now you have to stay on your toes, improve your typing ability and your reading skills, just to be able to play the game at all!

Look forward to other exciting uses of Internet security technologies to protect your game-play soon, such as the dial-a-spell protection mechanism, where upon attempting to cast a spell a small mathematical problem is displayed on the screen and you must type the answer in on a virtual keypad in order to complete the spell-casting.

Big Brother is watching you play.